Banning artworks such as Hylas and the Nymphs is a long, slippery slope

In suggesting that #MeToo legitimises her removal of an iconic painting from public view, Clare Gannaway insults those who contributed to that initiative in order to shed light on hidden criminal practices (Art or soft porn? Unease as gallery removes painting, 1 February). The claim that this act is “about challenging us” and “not about censorship” is unconvincing – such an aim would be better met by framing the work in an exhibition that promotes productive debate. A curator’s job is to enable the public to see works and understand the historical processes of which they form a part. Nazi curators, too, challenged us by removing art from public view because it conflicted with their political aims and puritanical taste. But few would now consider this to have been anything other than censorship.Katrin KohlProfessor of German, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford

• The Manchester curators would do well to study their art history before getting themselves into such a muddle. Back in 1885, a Royal Academician called Horsley, writing indignantly to the Times under the pen name of “A British Matron”, urged that nudity in art should be banned on the grounds that it is illegal to go out in public naked, that young ladies of the higher social order are no longer shocked when contemplating such a painting in mixed company, and were at risk that any children they might as a result bear will fall under the influence of the cloven foot, prompting the artist, Whistler, to respond, “Horsley soit qui mal y pense” and Punch to satirise him as “Clothes-Horsley”.

The same Horsley was adamantly against women art students at the RA school studying life drawing for similar reasons (thus limiting their ability to train professionally and earn as a professional on a par with men). Henrietta Rae, the female artist who has not offended the Manchester curators despite a very similar portrayal of the same classical subject, trained in Paris where she studied from the nude. There were long, convoluted arguments on the difference between “nude” meaning pure in the classical sense and “naked” meaning corruptible or corrupted and the fear that the distinction would be lost on the lower orders who lacked the benefit of a good education. Decent young women who made a living as models and the artists who employed them were accused of immorality. The Manchester curators risk dragging women back 150 years.Teresa KrajewskaLondon

• I am upset that the Pre-Raphaelite painting by JW Waterhouse has been removed from the wall of Manchester Art Gallery. I’m puzzled as to how it may be considered offensive, and to whom: the gay community, because they object to Hylas being lured away from his male lover Heracles by naked female sirens?; the heterosexual male who does not like the depiction of being tempted by nubile females?; or is it offensive to women who would wish to deny their possible role as temptress? Are we to say that Hockney’s nude males, or Stanley Spencer’s naked fleshy ladies, are offensive, and remove them too?

More to the point surely is that that the painting is an important work of art that can be viewed outside London.Lucy EarleHaslemere, Surrey

• Is it really proposed to judge the artistic legacy of the past 2000 years or more by the standards of what is currently fashionable in the newspapers in January 2018? Many people could object to the homoerotic art of ancient Greece, or of Italian Renaissance master Michelangelo, which celebrates the beauty of young men and boys; others might hate the procession of plump female nudes in post-Raphaelite painting on the grounds that it objectifies women; I hate the sick, sadistic violence of Spanish Baroque paintings of Christian saints and martyrs. Are we going to ban all these because somebody might be offended? It all betrays a lamentable understanding of the history of art, and of the style and meaning of this painting in particular. Rather than waste time entering into this bogus “conversation”, the Manchester Art Gallery should be boycotted until this decision is reversed.Richard CrookBrighton

• Manchester Art Gallery has chosen to remove Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs as an example of “male artists pursuing women’s bodies” and using “the female body as a passive decorative artform”. Yet in the ancient myth that inspires the picture, the youthful Hylas is about to be drawn to his death by the sexually predatory nymphs. The pursued and objectified body is male.Professor Matthew LeighSt Anne’s College, Oxford

• Good to read Jonathan Jones’ able commentary on the high-handed, rather offensive censorship of Waterhouse’s painting at Manchester Art Gallery (A return to a new repression and hypocrisy, 1 February). Hylas and the Nymphs is truly beautiful art that celebrates the spirituality of its subject – and that is the reason for its huge popularity. There is plenty of cheap porn available out there if that is what anybody wants. Taking this great art down and leaving a blank wall is a consummate act of philistinism and prudery, almost an act of vandalism – the kind of reaction that turns beauty and spirituality into crudeness and obscenity, feeding the hypocritical puritanism Jones refers to, that makes sex a dirty and indecent thing.

How insightful it was of Orwell when he wrote in 1984 of the Anti-Sex League as an important facet of totalitarianism. It has arrived now, big time, on the back of a lot of generalisations and hysteria following media over-reporting of recent events that, however bad they were, only affected a minority of people and were certainly not attributable to the sensitising, elevating influence of the fine arts in any shape or form.John McMillanBridgwater, Somerset

• In order to “prompt conversations about how we display and interpret artworks”, the British Museum might follow Clare Gannaway’s example by taking down the Parthenon frieze. We will then no longer be tempted to gaze at exposed genitalia and scenes of extreme violence. The empty wall space would also allow us to think about how those marvellous Greek marbles came to be in the British Museum in the first place.Paul TattamChinley, Derbyshire

• Your arts correspondent, Mark Brown, repeatedly refers to Waterhouse as a Pre-Raphaelite. Waterhouse was a prominent Victorian painter contemporary with the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, but was never a member and to refer to him as such is just plain wrong.Andrew SuttonIlminster, Somerset

• I see in the picture that JW Waterhouse’s girls are disporting themselves in a clear stream full of modesty-enhancing water-lilies. Speaking as someone who bathes amid water-lilies every year as I try and stop them choking my pond, I can tell you that the experience is the opposite of erotic, unless lolling in smelly mud is your thing. So much for botanical exactitude, Pre-Raphaelites.Ruth BrandonLondon

• Should the Manchester Art Gallery wish to remove any other paintings for containing an excess what Pete and Dud would have called “busty substances”, then I should be happy to drive up there and take them off their hands – particularly if a Rubens or Titian was involved.Martin JeevesCardiff